Class lets 'CSI' wannabes get their feet wet

Underwater Crime Scene program students Tiffany Ashcom, left, and Ryan LaPete scour the mud during an exercise in Panama City.

MARI DARR-WELCH/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/DECEMBER 2006

BY MELISSA NELSONTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Saturday, January 6, 2007 at 6:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, January 6, 2007 at 12:00 a.m.

PANAMA CITY - Using metal detectors, tape measures and plastic evidence bags, Ryan LaPete and four fellow students scoured the muddy banks of Panama City's North Bay for clues in the murder and rape of a young woman.
The crime scene was fake, staged by an instructor from Florida State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation Program - the only one of its kind. Instead of writing an end-of-term paper, the five students worked together to unravel a scenario set up by professor Michael Zinszer.
Agencies from the National Security Administration to NASA have scrambled to hire the several dozen divers who have graduated with minors in underwater crime scene investigation since the program began at FSU Panama City's waterfront campus in 2003.
Federal officials realized there was a shortage of trained investigators who could collect evidence if a terrorist attack occurred on the water and helped establish the program with a $300,000 Homeland Security grant.
"So far we haven't had a real bad terrorist attack involving our harbors. Part of our school is preparing investigators and law enforcement for that," program director Tom Kelley said.
The goal of an underwater crime scene investigator is to do as thorough a forensic investigation underwater as a forensic investigator would do on land, said Zinszer, a former Navy experimental diver.
"In the past, the mentality wasn't investigation, it was just recovery," he said.
And underwater investigation skills are especially important in Florida where millions live near water, said Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha. FDLE provides some annual funding for the FSU program, which in turn trains some of the agency's officers in forensic diving.
"The training that is being offered is so specialized and much more advanced than other training that has been offered," she said.
Popular Mechanics magazine recently named the school one of its top-10 cutting-edge science and engineering programs.
"The program is so new, some of the graduates are sort of making their own jobs," Zinszer said.
NASA has employed graduates to work in the Aquarius Lab on the ocean floor off the Florida Keys, where astronauts train for extreme conditions.
Patrick Green, of Panama City, hopes to assist marine biologists collecting samples for lab research. His classmate, LaPete, of Destin, envisions a career testing diving equipment.
Most of the students are either science or criminology majors, but others like recent graduate Melissa Adams have no background in forensics or law enforcement. Adams, who works as an investigative diver for the Washington County Sheriff's Office, was an English major and aspiring crime novelist with no diving experience before Kelley talked her into taking an introductory class.
She was hooked.
"A lot of people look at what I do and think I'm just kind of morbid but it's not like that," said the 36-year-old mother of four who has helped recover the bodies of seven drowning victims in less than a year on the job.
By recording the location of a body underwater, noting objects on and around the body, recording the dead person's hand positions and doing other detailed analysis, she provided victims' families and investigators answers to questions that sometimes go unanswered when a person dies underwater. Her work gave information about how the victims drowned and whether their deaths were suspicious.
"My biggest problem with the courses was that I had never been athletic and I felt like I was playing catch up with some of the other students, but I learned as I went," she said.
Zinszer likes to challenge his students with unexpected staged crimes. The murder and rape scenario he gave students at the end of last year was among the most difficult cases he has presented introductory students. It involved a knife, bloodied plank and other evidence that were thrown into the bay but that had washed back on land and were buried in shallow muddy water.
"Not all underwater investigation involves diving," he said.
The team documented their evidence recovery through photographs, mapped the evidence location and detailed their search with a slide show.
A second team investigated another staged crime involving a gun thrown into the bay from atop a highway bridge. Zinszer criticized the team for not checking hazardous water conditions before diving. One of the program's goals is to stress diver safety, something that often gets overlooked in the rush to find answers in high-profile crimes, he said.
"That's one benefit of all the training we are doing, we are making law enforcement more aware of the risks to divers of making them go out in unsafe conditions," he said.
Zinszer said some of his best students are people like Adams who have no diving experience before they take his introductory class. Non-divers haven't learned bad habits and are more cautious than those who have experience with recreational diving, he said.
But he said it doesn't take other students long to discover forensic diving isn't for them.
"Only about 40 percent who start out graduate. The others find out that it's really about a lot of getting cold and muddy and that's not what they thought it was," he said.

PANAMA CITY - Using metal detectors, tape measures and plastic evidence bags, Ryan LaPete and four fellow students scoured the muddy banks of Panama City's North Bay for clues in the murder and rape of a young woman.<BR>
The crime scene was fake, staged by an instructor from Florida State University's Underwater Crime Scene Investigation Program - the only one of its kind. Instead of writing an end-of-term paper, the five students worked together to unravel a scenario set up by professor Michael Zinszer.<BR>
Agencies from the National Security Administration to NASA have scrambled to hire the several dozen divers who have graduated with minors in underwater crime scene investigation since the program began at FSU Panama City's waterfront campus in 2003.<BR>
Federal officials realized there was a shortage of trained investigators who could collect evidence if a terrorist attack occurred on the water and helped establish the program with a $300,000 Homeland Security grant.<BR>
"So far we haven't had a real bad terrorist attack involving our harbors. Part of our school is preparing investigators and law enforcement for that," program director Tom Kelley said.<BR>
The goal of an underwater crime scene investigator is to do as thorough a forensic investigation underwater as a forensic investigator would do on land, said Zinszer, a former Navy experimental diver.<BR>
"In the past, the mentality wasn't investigation, it was just recovery," he said.<BR>
And underwater investigation skills are especially important in Florida where millions live near water, said Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Kristen Perezluha. FDLE provides some annual funding for the FSU program, which in turn trains some of the agency's officers in forensic diving.<BR>
"The training that is being offered is so specialized and much more advanced than other training that has been offered," she said.<BR>
Popular Mechanics magazine recently named the school one of its top-10 cutting-edge science and engineering programs.<BR>
"The program is so new, some of the graduates are sort of making their own jobs," Zinszer said.<BR>
NASA has employed graduates to work in the Aquarius Lab on the ocean floor off the Florida Keys, where astronauts train for extreme conditions.<BR>
Patrick Green, of Panama City, hopes to assist marine biologists collecting samples for lab research. His classmate, LaPete, of Destin, envisions a career testing diving equipment.<BR>
Most of the students are either science or criminology majors, but others like recent graduate Melissa Adams have no background in forensics or law enforcement. Adams, who works as an investigative diver for the Washington County Sheriff's Office, was an English major and aspiring crime novelist with no diving experience before Kelley talked her into taking an introductory class.<BR>
She was hooked.
"A lot of people look at what I do and think I'm just kind of morbid but it's not like that," said the 36-year-old mother of four who has helped recover the bodies of seven drowning victims in less than a year on the job.<BR>
By recording the location of a body underwater, noting objects on and around the body, recording the dead person's hand positions and doing other detailed analysis, she provided victims' families and investigators answers to questions that sometimes go unanswered when a person dies underwater. Her work gave information about how the victims drowned and whether their deaths were suspicious.<BR>
"My biggest problem with the courses was that I had never been athletic and I felt like I was playing catch up with some of the other students, but I learned as I went," she said.<BR>
Zinszer likes to challenge his students with unexpected staged crimes. The murder and rape scenario he gave students at the end of last year was among the most difficult cases he has presented introductory students. It involved a knife, bloodied plank and other evidence that were thrown into the bay but that had washed back on land and were buried in shallow muddy water.<BR>
"Not all underwater investigation involves diving," he said.<BR>
The team documented their evidence recovery through photographs, mapped the evidence location and detailed their search with a slide show.<BR>
A second team investigated another staged crime involving a gun thrown into the bay from atop a highway bridge. Zinszer criticized the team for not checking hazardous water conditions before diving. One of the program's goals is to stress diver safety, something that often gets overlooked in the rush to find answers in high-profile crimes, he said.<BR>
"That's one benefit of all the training we are doing, we are making law enforcement more aware of the risks to divers of making them go out in unsafe conditions," he said.<BR>
Zinszer said some of his best students are people like Adams who have no diving experience before they take his introductory class. Non-divers haven't learned bad habits and are more cautious than those who have experience with recreational diving, he said.<BR>
But he said it doesn't take other students long to discover forensic diving isn't for them.<BR>
"Only about 40 percent who start out graduate. The others find out that it's really about a lot of getting cold and muddy and that's not what they thought it was," he said.<BR>